ERITREA'S RECENT PAST

By
Dan Connell /
November 30, 1994

ASMARA, ERITREA

* Italy colonized Eritrea in 1890. In 1952, the United Nations resolved to federate Eritrea with Ethiopia, despite Eritrean demands for independence. In 1962, the landlocked Ethiopia moved to swallow up Eritrea in order to gain its coveted coastline.

Throughout the protracted 30-year war of independence, the strategic Red Sea territory - dubbed the Middle East's ``southern flank'' - served as a cold war battlefield of dizzying political turnabouts that helped shape the Eritreans' deep-seated wariness of would-be foreign benefactors.